The Role Of Strangeness In Ultrarelativistic Nuclear Collisions

We review the progress in understanding the strange particle yields in nuclear collisions and their role in signalling quark-gluon plasma formation. We report on new insights into the formation mechanisms of strange particles during ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions and discuss interesting new details of the strangeness phase diagram. In the main part of the review we show how the measured (multi-)strange particle abundances can be used as a testing ground for chemical equilibration in nuclear collisions, and how the results of such an analysis lead to important constraints on the collision dynamics and space-time evolution of high energy heavy-ion reactions. a To be published in Quark-Gluon Plasma 2, R.C. Hwa (Eds.), World Scientific Contents 1 Introduction 1 2 Strangeness Production Mechanisms 3 2.1 Quark-Gluon Production Mechanisms : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 4 2.2 Hadronic Production Mechanisms : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 10 3 Thermal Mo..